Last night before I made a couple NY pies, I thought, what a perfect time to get an accurate calorie count for one of my pies. I have a pretty standard cheese pie base, and from there, I can add toppings. Let me just say, I now know why my jeans are tight. I'm not ignorant of the fact that it's pizza, and not health food, but in the quantity that I can eat,..... holy crap. So if anybody else is counting calories this winter, maybe this will help.

I use a 350g dough ball at 60-62%, so at say, 60, that's 220g of flour. My flour is 350cal/100g. so, 770 dough cal per 15" pie. I use straight milled tomatoes, no oil or sugar,.... they're 35 calories/ half cup. I'll guess and say 30 cal for my pie.The whole milk Mozz I use is 90 cal/30g. I thin slice it on my slicer, and use 90g, so 270cal.A guaranteed tbsp of grated cheese, 20 cal.

So if I remember my 4th grade math, one of my 14-15"cheese pies is 1090,.. call it 1100 calories !

I know I'm not the only pizza freak here, and my crust is thin, etc... I can eat a whole pie pretty easily. Add a craft beer, salad, and oh yeah, some toppings, mystery solved.

My sausage for example is 200cal/ 3.5 oz. the picture is more clear. If my doctor was here watching me type, he would remind me of all the sodium in one pie too,...huge.

Last night, I had a half a beer from a grumbler, a small salad, and half of this mushroom and sausage pie. It was delicious, and I didn't starve !

Last night before I made a couple NY pies, I thought, what a perfect time to get an accurate calorie count for one of my pies. I have a pretty standard cheese pie base, and from there, I can add toppings. Let me just say, I now know why my jeans are tight. I'm not ignorant of the fact that it's pizza, and not health food, but in the quantity that I can eat,..... holy crap. So if anybody else is counting calories this winter, maybe this will help.

I use a 350g dough ball at 60-62%, so at say, 60, that's 220g of flour. My flour is 350cal/100g. so, 770 dough cal per 15" pie. I use straight milled tomatoes, no oil or sugar,.... they're 35 calories/ half cup. I'll guess and say 30 cal for my pie.The whole milk Mozz I use is 90 cal/30g. I thin slice it on my slicer, and use 90g, so 270cal.A guaranteed tbsp of grated cheese, 20 cal.

So if I remember my 4th grade math, one of my 14-15"cheese pies is 1090,.. call it 1100 calories !

I know I'm not the only pizza freak here, and my crust is thin, etc... I can eat a whole pie pretty easily. Add a craft beer, salad, and oh yeah, some toppings, mystery solved.

My sausage for example is 200cal/ 3.5 oz. the picture is more clear. If my doctor was here watching me type, he would remind me of all the sodium in one pie too,...huge.

Last night, I had a half a beer from a grumbler, a small salad, and half of this mushroom and sausage pie. It was delicious, and I didn't starve !

Nice write up...thanks for the calorie info.It really is unfair that this stuff has so much in the fat and calorie department. And yours doesn't even have much cheese on it' I'd hate to have you disect one of my grease bombs!

The thing I really hate about dusting and lightly oiling my proofing bowl is that it screws up my calorie count. I just decided to pay no mind to it and do cardio like crazy to make up for my pizza cooking days.

I have the Lose It! app that syncs between my iPhone, iPad and on my computer via Internet wifi.

You can search their database for foods or even barcode scan for ingredients. So far every food item I have barcode scanned with the iPhone version of the app has entered accurate information. You can also create your own recipes from the entered information. What I plan to do is take all my ingredients for making my typical personal size 11" pies starting with a simple Margherita and enter all the ingredients used right down to the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, olive oil. Yes, one teaspoon of yeast is 13 calories. You can build all kinds of recipe combinations. It should take out all the guessing.

MyFitnessPal is another great app for that. Has a vast food database and allows you to add anything it doesn't have and make up recipe combos. As a bonus, it's a great fitness tracker into the bargain!

One of the primary reasons I've been into pizza making over the past year is to make healthier takes on pizza compared to Frozen/Delivery. I believe the OP is being a bit hard on himself in regards to whether his pizza consumption is the shame worthy decadence-bomb that it may or may not be. 1100 calories for what I assume to be by-and-far your biggest meal of the day isn't really that bad. If your sodium content isn't too out of control, I don't think you have too much to worry about. My first pic is of a fairly standard daily calorie + fat chart...

I'm a small dude, so I am looking at 1980 calories + 69g fat. 2400mg of sodium a day I guess, according to the nutritional label on a random can of soup I just grabbed. So I am looking at an idealish...cal/fat/sodium% per day = 1980/69g/100%.

Doing some forensic accounting as to how I'm getting dinged by my pizza making, I've got the following info on a pie I just made:

My Semi-Typical Dough: 350g bread flour, 205g H2O (58%), 1/4 tsp Salt Of Life , 1/2 tsp onion powder. This was cold formented for 2 days, 2 pizza crusts. I make small (10"-12") pies even if I cook for a lot of people, it's just easier to launch for me.

Sauce: Mix of stuff, cooked. Puree + crushed tomatoes.

Cheese: In this example, I went with 3.5 ounces of Grande brand Provo Nello provolone.

Toppings: On this pie I diced a bunch of green pepper and seitan mock-bacon, and rubbed it in calabrian chili oil.

As a percentage of recommended daily consumption that's a percentage break down of...Calories= 39.6%Fat= 50.7%Sodium= 49%

When I eat a pizza like this it is typically the biggest meal of the day for me... usually 2 meals really. So I don't think it's the worst thing ever. I have to admit, with going as low-salt with the crust and sauce as I tend to do, I was hoping for a better all around tally... but that cheese do tend to dominate the whole picture. I know there are soy and low sodium cheeses, but I'm a cheese guy, I shudder at the thought.

If your dough has any oil it don't forget to include the calories (9-calories per gram) from it too. If you want to get into "healthy" pizza you can blend your existing cheese 50/50 with a tofu based cheese product ("0" cholesterol) to get a 50% reduction in cholesterol from the cheese component, then you can explore poultry sausage (actually pretty good). If you're going to Pizza Expo you should be able to find to find some there to sample. In some supermarkets you can find cholesterol free cheese product from Galaxy Nutritional Foods which can be blended with your regular cheese. Or for toppings just stay with the veggies, or if meat is on the menu use skinless chicken or fish/seafood. It sure beats eating only a single slice! Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

If your dough has any oil it don't forget to include the calories (9-calories per gram) from it too. If you want to get into "healthy" pizza you can blend your existing cheese 50/50 with a tofu based cheese product ("0" cholesterol) to get a 50% reduction in cholesterol from the cheese component, then you can explore poultry sausage (actually pretty good). If you're going to Pizza Expo you should be able to find to find some there to sample. In some supermarkets you can find cholesterol free cheese product from Galaxy Nutritional Foods which can be blended with your regular cheese. Or for toppings just stay with the veggies, or if meat is on the menu use skinless chicken or fish/seafood. It sure beats eating only a single slice! Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

If your dough has any oil it don't forget to include the calories (9-calories per gram) from it too. If you want to get into "healthy" pizza you can blend your existing cheese 50/50 with a tofu based cheese product ("0" cholesterol) to get a 50% reduction in cholesterol from the cheese component, then you can explore poultry sausage (actually pretty good). If you're going to Pizza Expo you should be able to find to find some there to sample. In some supermarkets you can find cholesterol free cheese product from Galaxy Nutritional Foods which can be blended with your regular cheese. Or for toppings just stay with the veggies, or if meat is on the menu use skinless chicken or fish/seafood. It sure beats eating only a single slice! Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Tom,'Much appreciated good Doctor. Do you have a decent tasting low carb alternative blend for the flour substitute?Thank you.

Here is a screen capture from my Lose It! app as seen on the Internet browser for my basic personal 11" Margherita pizza. This is the starter. I usually make a batch of dough for 4 pizzas and go from there. The actual amount of flour would be about .56 cups but the program does not let me input in grams but only by general cup sizes. So I used 2/3 cup figuring some additional bench flour in the mix. From this basic 815 calorie recipe I can add more toppings. Each pepperoni pizza slice is about 10 calories and I will usually add 10 for another 100 calories for a standard pepperoni pizza. This is the size pizza I can bake on one of those electric table top pizza ovens and is approximately the size you would get in a wood-fired oven Neapolitan restaurant. When I calculate calories I will just enter the basic pizza recipe and then the additional toppings separately. The whole pizza is one serving of 815 calories. You don't have to eat the whole thing.

Tracking calories is inaccurate. Companies are allowed to by law over or under estimate on their calorie labels. That's why tracking the macronutrients(fat/carbs/proteins) on the labels is far more accurate than the actual calories themselves . If you add up the macros on labels you'll see that some times, maybe more often than not the calories wont add up. Each macro has its own calorie count, 1g of fat=9 calories and 1g of carbs/proteins=4 calories.

Just some food for thought because a lot of the calories from pizza comes from fat.

Bob;I'd like to say that I have a good low carb alternative for a pizza crust, but I don't so I can't. I never bought into the low carb thing of years past. Some things are just intended to be made with carbohydrates and I believe pizza is one of them. When people used to ask me about a low carb alternative to their existing crust my stock answer was to find a decent low carb crust and buy it (I had to really lower my bar to buy one and then I still didn't like it). My other answer was to simply make the thinnest pizza skin possible, that way it will still taste like a pizza crust but contribute fewer carbohydrates. One of the things I experimented with along these lines was a yeast free crust. What it boils down to is to make your favorite dough without and yeast. You will probably need to adjust the water/absorption to achieve a dough consistency that will allow you to pin the dough out. After mixing, scale and ball the dough, and set aside to rest for about 15-minutes, then pin the dough out very thin and trim to desired size. Place the skin on your perferred baking surface and parbake (the crust will bake out firm) immediately dress as desired and place back into the oven to finish baking. Sorta like pizza on a cracker, but still better than the other "twig and leaf" renditions that I found being touted as so great.If all of this sounds familiar it is because it's only half a bubble off of making a pizza on a tortilla skin, maybe a little thinner.Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Tracking calories is inaccurate. Companies are allowed to by law over or under estimate on their calorie labels. That's why tracking the macronutrients(fat/carbs/proteins) on the labels is far more accurate than the actual calories themselves . If you add up the macros on labels you'll see that some times, maybe more often than not the calories wont add up. Each macro has its own calorie count, 1g of fat=9 calories and 1g of carbs/proteins=4 calories.

Just some food for thought because a lot of the calories from pizza comes from fat.

Calorie counts on most foods made from carbohydrates, protein and fat take in the combination of ingredients and the fact that a gram of fat has more calories than protein and carbohydrates is accounted for. The problem is if you read the label carefully about what is a serving you'll find such a serving is nothing like you might assume. It will be much smaller. Then people just ignore that, eat two or more servings, and count it as one. That's just self deception. Most restaurants, especially American or bar food, will serve what amounts to four or more servings on a plate. Pizza restaurants are generally going to serve more salt and fat (oil) in a personal pizza than the recipe I make at home. So my basic 815 calorie pizza might be closer to a thousand calories plus the toppings.

I sometimes leave out the olive oil in the dough as well as the sprits on the dressed out pizza and can go a little lighter on the cheese. At 200-220 grams for the dough I think I have that as thin as I want for an 11" pie. Bake on a stone instead of an oiled pan also helps. I don't like to go cheap on the ingredients or make substitutions. Why bother if it comes down to that? I often wonder how Walmart can offer a $3.50 frozen pizza when I spend that much money for my cheese alone even if I buy it in a Walmart.

Calorie counts on most foods made from carbohydrates, protein and fat take in the combination of ingredients and the fact that a gram of fat has more calories than protein and carbohydrates is accounted for. The problem is if you read the label carefully about what is a serving you'll find such a serving is nothing like you might assume. It will be much smaller. Then people just ignore that, eat two or more servings, and count it as one. That's just self deception. Most restaurants, especially American or bar food, will serve what amounts to four or more servings on a plate. Pizza restaurants are generally going to serve more salt and fat (oil) in a personal pizza than the recipe I make at home. So my basic 815 calorie pizza might be closer to a thousand calories plus the toppings.

I sometimes leave out the olive oil in the dough as well as the sprits on the dressed out pizza and can go a little lighter on the cheese. At 200-220 grams for the dough I think I have that as thin as I want for an 11" pie. Bake on a stone instead of an oiled pan also helps. I don't like to go cheap on the ingredients or make substitutions. Why bother if it comes down to that? I often wonder how Walmart can offer a $3.50 frozen pizza when I spend that much money for my cheese alone even if I buy it in a Walmart.

What you said about people not realizing how small serving sizes are is true. But what you said about the calories being accounted for is incorrect.

I've attached a picture of a box of cereal. If you add up the calories from the macros, it adds up to 123 calories per serving, which is 3 calories off from the 120 stated on the box. Now 3 calories is nothing but you're like me and had 3 serving you'd be off by 9 calories. Like you said people don't realize how small servings are and eat 2 or 3 or more. And you'd be surprised at how many food companies and labels are like this. So if you're tracking only calories and they are off by those increments and you are eating more than you think those small numbers add up very quickly at the end of the day. That's why I said tracking actual macronutrient numbers is far superior than tracking the calories alone because they have to put in the correct amount of fat/carb/protein be they are legally allowed to over or underestimated on the calories.

120 vs. a supposed 123? That is 2.5% off. That to me is a little bit of nitpicking. The percentages of each is most likely rounded off. Then again how many measure out an exact serving portion? I visually pour 1-1/2 cups of Cheerios and then like a bartender pour what I think is a quarter cup of 1% milk when I eat a breakfast cereal. I've measured a few times to get a feel for the portions. Anyway, and you showed it, the point I made was they do account for fat calories at 9 per gram and protein and carbs at 4 per gram in their calculations. I think if you dig further you will find that those 9 and 4 calories are also rounded off.

Take my Margherita pizza calcs. I would have preferred to measure in grams for a little more accuracy but settled on cups. By grams I know I make about a .56 cup of flour for a dough ball. The nearest I could input was 2/3rds cup or .667 cups. I just figured I would also use some bench flour when stretching so it works out. I also realize that when I mix my dough there is some loss and when I cut my dough in four pieces usually the pieces vary by 10-20 grams as well. I just figure it all averages out and using that 2/3 cup figure probably makes the calories higher than the actual. No harm in that I figure because if the idea is to lose weight you could actually be eating less than you think you are -- which is good.

A calorie is a calorie and do count. But how many times do you forget to factor in a table spoon of mustard or mayo on a sandwich? Yes, it can add up but if you get in the habit of estimating high you should be all right despite this inexact science.

There are so many factors. Your weight, your age, your metabolism rate, how active you are and what kinds of foods you eat are all important and factor in. Now they say each person could be genetically disposed to different kinds of diets. But it still comes down to fuel in energy out.

The cruelest part of dieting is the heavier you are the more you can eat on a diet if say you have a goal to lose a pound per week (3500 calorie deficit from weight maintenance.) Also, the heavier you are the more calories you burn say in walking 3 miles in one hour. So, as you lose weight you have to eat less and exercise more for the same result.

What you said about people not realizing how small serving sizes are is true. But what you said about the calories being accounted for is incorrect.

I've attached a picture of a box of cereal. If you add up the calories from the macros, it adds up to 123 calories per serving, which is 3 calories off from the 120 stated on the box. Now 3 calories is nothing but you're like me and had 3 serving you'd be off by 9 calories. Like you said people don't realize how small servings are and eat 2 or 3 or more. And you'd be surprised at how many food companies and labels are like this. So if you're tracking only calories and they are off by those increments and you are eating more than you think those small numbers add up very quickly at the end of the day. That's why I said tracking actual macronutrient numbers is far superior than tracking the calories alone because they have to put in the correct amount of fat/carb/protein be they are legally allowed to over or underestimated on the calories.

There's so much rounding going on with these nutrition labels, it isn't worth obsessing over. If you want to know more accurately what's in your food, you need to look at USDA data provided through the USDA SR-21 directly, or through several third-party databases. One such database can be found at nutritiondata.self.com. The listing for Reese's Puffs (per your example) can be found below:

As you can see, the more precise amounts per server are 3.4 g fat, 22 g carbohydrates, and 1.9 g protein. Not including the differences between carbohydrates (which are plenty), the nutritional calorie (thermodynamic kilocalorie) total is 126.2. If you rely on nutrition facts printed on product packaging, you will likely be off by some small amount no matter what mathematical approach you use.

The nutritiondata.self.com website that November cited is also the one that I use for my analytical work. I might add that the detailed type of nutrition data as is given at that website is also sometimes available from the companies behind any given product. However, they don't usually make that kind of information public. Sometimes they will provide it upon request but more so for professionals than for ordinary consumers or for guys like me who might be trying to reverse engineer their products. Often that more detailed information will report specific values for nutrients, albeit small in many cases, that show up as zero in the final Nutrition Facts, because of rounding.

As for the matter of rounding and how the FDA requires that nutrients be reported on nutrition labels, the document that I often refer to is the one at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=101.9. For our purposes here, the relevant parts run from "Calories, total" to "Protein". One of the things that you will notice is that the rounding is stricter for certain nutrients than others. For example, the rounding is stricter for "bad" guys like fats (including the current villain Trans Fat), cholesterol and sodium, and less so for "good" guys like dietary fiber and protein. In either case, the swings in possible nutrient values can be quite high. Percentage-wise, they can be more pronounced for small amounts of nutrients than large amounts.

Companies will also play games to keep certain nutrients at zero in their nutrition information. A good current example of this is in the reporting of Trans Fats. Under FDA rules and regulations, so long as trans fats are less than 0.5 grams per serving, it can be reported on labels as 0, with that fact often being trumpeted on the labels and packaging and advertising for all to see. But the 0 number is usually interpreted by consumers as actually being 0. But if more than one serving is consumed, the trans fats number is no longer 0. The entire margarine, margarine-like and shortening industries is being turned on its head because of the Trans Fats rules.

There is also something that is called the 20% rule. What that means is that a reported nutrient value can be off by 20% from its actual value, on either side, and not be subject to scrutiny by the FDA (or USDA). I have read reports that the people who come up with nutrient values often game the system by reporting lower numbers for the "bad" guys and larger numbers for the "good" guys. And they know that they can get away with it because the FDA won't act unless people are getting sick, or false or questionable health or nutrition claims have been made, or their products might be recalled, etc. Also, they know that the FDA does not have the staffing to enforce their own rules and regulations. I have seen cases where I believe even the 20% rule has been violated.

There are also food processors who intentionally overweight their products so as not to lay themselves to claims that they are stiffing consumers by selling them underweight products.

It is also important to consider how nutrition information is created. The two basic methods that I have identified is the use of software or independent test labs that do destructive testing. These days, it seems the more common method is to use software. Some companies, like Papa John's, for example, uses software in its own facilities using its own personnel (or so I was told), whereas others farm the work out to companies to come up with the final nutrition information, usually working off of extensive data bases. Sometimes the specific software used (like Genesis), or the outfit that created the nutrition information, will be stated at their websites where nutrition information or allergy information is given. Using test labs seems to me to be a more accurate way of arriving at nutrient values but that approach seems to be on the wane.

The point of all of the above is that there are enough holes in the nutrition numbers to drive a truck through. In some cases, it might be a small truck but it might also be a big truck.

At the moment my sodium intake is about 5g-6g a day and maybe around 7g-8g on Saturdays. As long as you don't have massive fluctuations you'll be fine.

David,

I assume you mean grams of salt, not sodium. 5-6 grams of ordinary table salt comes to about 0.9-1.1 teaspoons, or about 2083-2499mg sodium. 7-8 grams of salt comes to about 1.25-1.43 teaspoons, or about 2916-3333mg sodium. Those numbers are in the ballpark of the recommended 2300mg sodium per day, but below the number now recommended by the American Heart Association and other health organizations. That number is 1500mg sodium per day. That number is very hard to achieve because salt is used in so many prepared foods. It will almost be impossible to keep below that number eating in restaurants. A recent study showed that restaurants invariably use more salt in their foods than reported in their own nutrition information for those foods, and not just by a little.

You guys might think it's obsessing but it's those little things that matter.

When I said obsessing, I was referring specifically to the nutrition labels on product packaging. In that context, your statement above becomes confusing if not self-defeating. If you think the "little things" matter, you couldn't possibly care very much about what's on the product packaging because the "little things" aren't listed there. Along with Peter's elaboration, it must be said there is nothing printed on the package that you can truly trust enough to base a diet as precise as the one you are trying to maintain.

On a separate but related note, I do personally think the precision you are attempting to attain is obsessive and excessive. I think that because I doubt you are keeping that level of precision in tracking your caloric expenditures. It is safe to say nobody does. You could burn an extra calorie by blinking 3% more on a dry day.